Don't Miss this talk

monday 26th may
7.00 pm ‘Indian Women IN THE HOUSE OF FICTION’ – a book release, reading and talk by Geetanjali Chanda





Indian Women in the House of Fiction explores the quiet negotiation of women and the kinds of homes they wish to inhabit. The house is not merely a backdrop in Indian women’s fiction but almost a character that bears witness to the changes taking place in the protagonists’ lives. The architectural and social spaces of havelis, bungalows and apartments impose their own unique patterns of women’s relationships inside and outside the domestic space. In these fictional homes, women find ways to transform restrictive segregated spaces – like the zenana of a haveli – into a potentially empowering ‘womenspace’ that is carried over into both bungalows and apartments. The current popularity of Indo-English literature notwithstanding, the anxiety of conveying an authentic Indianness in what is sometimes still regarded as an “auntie tongue” shadows some authors and their work. Notions of Indianness are preserved, taught and performed in the home and it is also the site upon which concerns about identity, language, nationalism, family or community values and gender roles are played out. In this book, Geetanjali Singh Chanda maps Indian English women’s literature in India and the diaspora while situating it in the larger framework of world literatures.

Geetanjali Singh Chanda is a Senior Lecturer in the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at Yale University. Before Yale, she taught at the Hong Kong University and Gettysburg College. She completed her undergraduate studies at Delhi University, did a language teaching certification at the Sorbonne, received her Master’s degree in Women’s Studies from George Washington University, and completed her doctoral dissertation at Hong Kong University.